Title

Authors

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2004

Abstract

This article focuses on police brutality and human rights violations in the United States. The author examines the infamous Riverside Sheriff's brutal beating of an undocumented Mexican woman—which was captured and broadcast live via television—as exemplary of a particular historical relationship between Mexican labor, the U.S. nation-state, and the material conditions of immigrant laborers. Tracing this relationship through a historical survey of Mexican immigration from the turn of the twentieth century and placing the analysis in the context of Critical Race Theory, the article foregrounds the intersection of race, class, and gender. While the author focuses on the Riverside Sheriff's beating and apprehension of Alicia Sotero Vásquez, she also suggests the larger issue of gender on the border and the violence being perpetrated upon women who are seen as disposable under transnational capitalism.